One Thing at a Time

The day I wrote the previous post, I’d woken up feeling like I was coming down with a virus. I cancelled dates and asked my husband to stay home a little later and help out with the kids before he left for work. I called the sitter. I did everything I’ve learned how to do when the flu is coming on.

Only it turned out not to be the flu. It turned out that my brain had the flu, or my soul, or whatever it is that gets “depressed” during these episodes. As I understood over the course of the morning that I was sick in the head and not the body, I told myself there was only one thing I could do to get through the day:

(Reader, are you sitting down?)

Do only one thing at a time.

“Do one…thing…at a time?” you parents might be asking. “But what about the…and the…?” I know. How can you possibly make the kids lunch while not talking on the phone? How can you get them dressed without also doing a load of laundry? And what about all that time you spend going to the bathroom and eating? There are hundreds of questions from the kids that will have to go unanswered while you’re behind the closed door! And if you don’t read the newspaper over breakfast (while also checking e-mail and ferrying food and drink from kitchen to table and letting the dog in and out 14 times), then whenever will you?

Well, some days are just about survival.

I’ve tried other means of survival during mental crises, usually with a different twist, like: no chores before breakfast. No reading the newspaper or being online while the children are at the table. I thought this one simple rule, doing one thing at a time, would streamline the day.

I recruited Jonah and Audrey to help. I sat them down on the window seat in the dining room and made my intentions very clear.

“I am playing an important game today,” I explained. “Since I’m feeling sick and yucky, I’m going to only do one thing at a time. So if you ask me for something, and I’m doing something else, I’m going to ask you to wait until I’m done.”

“Why?” asked Jonah.

“Because this will keep me relaxed and help me get better sooner. And I probably won’t yell as much.”

They were down with it. Having my “game” as the reason why I didn’t cater to their whims all day was a wonderful thing for my mind to fall back on. Normally, I’d have despaired that my kids would NEVER let me get any peace, and they were spoiled, and in my grandma’s day they’d have already been wacked upside the head with a wooden hairbrush. I reminded myself that, oh right, I was trying something different today. And I reminded the kids that. And they were fine with it.

Doing one thing at a time turned out to be a meditation of sorts. It didn’t nourish me the way sitting meditation does, but it kept me from committing what my teacher calls, “unskillful behavior.” Doing one thing at a time, I was always present and I could always handle what was happening.

The downside was that I stayed up late folding laundry, cleaning the kitchen and writing. I couldn’t bear for those things to go undone. Some things took longer. But I was calm.

Is this kind of behavior really possible in modern life?

What if we tried? How different would our days be?

Does My Mind Look Fat in This?

Today I am aware of my failures as a mother. And a wife. And a friend, a daughter, and a person in general. You could say that I have been meditating upon these failures all day. That's what it is when we focus so completely on one thing; it's a meditation.

So I am meditating in this way as I drive my car when a message that someone told me once runs through my mind. Who was the messenger? The writer Anne Lamott? The Zen monk Thich Nhat Hahn? My mom? Who knows? But it comes, as if by magic. Here it is:


Listen to me.
I want to tell you a secret.
There is nothing wrong with you.
There never was anything wrong with you.

But I looked so fat in all the swimsuits I tried on today. And I should've been at home with my little girl, who needs me so much. Is it worth it for me to leave her with the sitter just so I can burn fossil fuels to drive to a department store and try on synthetic swimsuits that make me look fat?

There is nothing wrong with you.


It's all well and good when I have my clothes on. I can fool everyone, even myself, that I'm not gaining weight, as long as I'm not standing naked in front of a 3-way mirror under flourescent lights. When am I going to get myself in order?

There is nothing wrong with you.

Let's just say for a moment that I'm not fat. Then why am I having all these deflating thoughts? Is this depression talking? Are my hormones fluctuating again? Is my mind stuck, for no reason at all, on the negative self-talk radio station Anne Lamott so accurately calls KFKD?

Let's say it is. I decide to let my brain go on with its prattle, minus my attention. I pop in a meditation CD. I am driving across the floating bridge. I am turning my attention to the sound of Thich Nhat Hahn's voice.

"Breathing in, I am aware that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I am aware that I am breathing out." BONNNG goes the bell.

There never was anything wrong with you.

This is so much more pleasant. I am enjoying the feel of my breath between sounds of the bell. I am feeling a nice warm feeling spread through my body.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with me.

Every Moment is a Transition

Those of you who know me know that I am not a happy housewife or a contented stay-at-home-mom (SAHM). Since I don't earn much money and I have two children, I really should be those things, but alas, my DNA, or inbred bad temperament, or something, prevents me.

Since admitting all of this two years ago and taking steps to remedy the situation, I have come to the point of being spoiled by adequate childcare. This means that when confronted with extended periods of responsibility for my children and dinner and laundry and the dog and all of that, my initial reaction is to try to get out of it.

This isn't something I'm proud of, or like to broadcast. But since you already know about my psychiatric medications and my drinking habits, why should I leave this out? One of my goals for this blog is to tell the truth about what happens to one's mind in mental breakdown/motherhood mode. I tend to identify rather well with Heather Armstrong's version of SAHM, which is Shit-Ass-Ho-Motherfucker.

Still, I often regret that I can't deal with domestic life in a more balanced, grateful, accepting way. Because in a global way, I feel deep gratitude for my life. If someone asked me to close my eyes and think of a time when I was happiest, I would say, "Now." And all of my jaw-flapping about practicing being present, and practicing non-attachment, and accepting the moment for what it is is totally sincere. It's just impossible to follow at home.

Or almost impossible. I am discovering a new way to practice non-attachment with the children. I tell myself that I am not in a hurry. And I practice not being in a hurry. When I am in a hurry, I am trying to escape the moment. The moment can be excruciating to stand, when Audrey needs to re-buckle her car seat after vacating it, or when Jonah sings songs while staring at the ceiling with his underwear halfway down his skinny legs and growls at me when I try to hurry him along so we can make it to preschool on time. During these moments, I would like nothing more than to be transported elsewhere.

Pema Chodron says most of our behavior is about running away from a feeling we can't abide. And yes, it's true, I hate feeling impatient and hurried and exasperated by my children. They don't seem to understand that the world is going to end if we don't follow our plans. I want it to be over. I don't want to be held captive by the dawdling and pointless resistance of these little people while I endeavor to get on with the day. The waiting and the dealing with petty problems en route to the front steps is hella boring. What am I supposed to do with my mind during these times?

I started to ask myself what would happen if I pretended the world wouldn't end if we were five minutes late. If Jonah went to school with no underwear once or twice. If the children brushed their teeth a couple hours after breakfast instead of the instant they swallowed their last bite of waffle. What would it be like if these transitions between events were the events themselves? If it was all one big event, or all one big transition?

In a Zen way, I could say that all moments are equally important, and equally unimportant.

Playing with this idea has been a tremendous relief for me, and for my kids. For one thing, it gives me something to do with my mind. And for another, it's having a good effect on the kids. Two nights ago, Jonah said to me, "Mom, you're not yelling anymore."

I looked up from my dinner and smiled. "You're right. I'm not. I'm really glad you noticed."

"Yeah," he said. "I think you're learning how not to yell."

I think I'll always be learning how not to yell. But that's okay, because I'm not in a hurry.

More Love, Please

More scribbles from the spring:

A day of rattling brains, over stimulated nerves, a queasy stomach. I’m crashing again. I seem to run in short cycles of mania and depression. Good Lord, could I be bipolar? If I am, it’s exacerbated by the citalopram. During the “manic” phase I feel boundless possibility, endless creativity, ideas popping left and right. I love everything, everyone. Yes! I say. This is life!

And then there are days like today, when I can’t handle a thing. The kids nag, I want to scream. Someone makes a demand on me, I want to knock them across the room.

In yoga class today, our sub teacher Beth focused on the yama of non-harming. Non-aggression. Which is really, says Beth, love and loving-kindness.

Love and loving-kindness were way beyond my ken today, so I meditated on non-aggression. I put my boundless aggressive energy into massive muscular dynamism. I did my standing poses like a warrior. I did my chatturanga dandasana with supple animal strength. When I was all emptied out, I did legs-up-the-wall pose and then savasana.

Savasana is always a great opportunity to feel the effects of my practice. I could see something wavering beneath all that aggression and cyclonic emotion: lack of love.

There is a lack of love in my household, I declared to myself. The kids are needy, naggy, whiny. Matt and I are depleted, irritated, always trying to get away. There is hardly ever a time when we can look at each other, face to face, and complete even a short, declarative sentence, much less a loving gaze or searching question. Trying to focus on one another feels futile. I miss him. I need us to be a real couple.

I am nervous about where my aggression lies today. It’s at my kids. I cannot connect with them. I just want them to be quiet, go away, leave me alone. I want to slough them onto someone else. I can’t do anything for them. They nag me, and pull at me, and demand of me, totally fucking constantly. Audrey has another cold, so she’s been crying and yelling a lot. Matt has a stomach aliment so he’s been running to the bathroom a lot. We are sick. This household is sick.

Lord, help us.

But what if love didn’t have to be something I made up from scratch? What if I didn’t have to create it or perform it? What if the love is always there, and now it’s buried and obscured? The love is, maybe, like the pearl. Buried under a lot of crap. But always there, always shining.

Thinking this way lets me off the hook. It relieves me of so much guilt (which I am feeling heaps of tonight). It’s not that I’m a bad person incapable of loving my children. I love them fiercely. The love is depressed by all this…depression.

Which brings me to another big question: when am I going to get better? Is this what it’s going to be like for a long time? A few good days, a few bad days, a violent haze, hello schizo mommy? Should I just put aside a trust fund for the children’s future therapy right now?

Depression is so weird because it can actually erase love. Or block my capacity to feel it, contact it, dip into its river. Oh, love, I think wearily. That’s when you don’t yell, right? I am continually stunned by the way depression can close off whole rooms in my mind, without my even noticing. It makes me feel like an utter loon.

So what do I do now? Up my dosage again?

Or this: maybe I do nothing. Maybe I just float.